The San Antonio Spurs are coached to think for themselves

[SsKSpurs21]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-san-antonio-spurs-are-coached-to-think-for-themselves-1475768553

Very good article.

Life is more than just about basketball.

EDIT: i posted the full article below

[FreezingTsmoove]

Im not paying for that shit

[SsKSpurs21]

Im not paying for that shit

Hmm that's interesting, I just read the full article. Now when I click on the link it's asking to sign in.

[SsKSpurs21]

https://www.google.com/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-san-antonio-spurs-are-coached-to-think-for-themselves-1475768553?

[SsKSpurs21]

San Antonio

Gregg Popovich came to San Antonio Spurs training camp this year prepared with some questions for his players. Such as: Who were the explorers pushing west in early America? What is the fourth holy city of Islam? And where is one in danger of being attacked by wombats?

This is not what most NBA teams talk about. It’s not what employees in a typical office talk about. But their boss is the one who demands the Spurs broach these topics and more serious ones at their place of work.

Popovich has been quizzing the Spurs on current events and world history for years. Now he wants them to engage more than ever. So this season, for the first time, he also plans to track which players know the most about everything other than basketball.

“What’s cool is that everybody looks at that person, like: How do you know that?” Popovich said. “Then you walk away and you watch and two or three guys are talking over here and two or three are talking over there. Or if I say something about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or the political system, they talk about it. It brings them together. There’s a purpose to it—and it’s fun for me.”

It’s in large part because of Popovich’s intellectual curiosity that this basketball team in the middle of Texas is usually acknowledged as the most progressive organization in the most socially conscious American sports league. For years, being an informed citizen has been a prerequisite of playing for the Spurs. But it has become imperative this season, which begins later this month, weeks before the U.S. presidential election, at a time of extraordinary racial and political tension across the country.

One reminder came last week when Popovich was asked about the national anthem protest of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. The same coach who is famously gruff during in-game television interviews offered thoughtful comments on race and privilege that were widely praised for their eloquence. He stressed understanding and empathy over ideology and demagoguery, and he insisted the conversation in America needed to persist before there could be any solutions. What he said was particularly notable because of who said it: not a black athlete but a powerful 67-year-old white coach.

Popovich spoke out during Spurs’ media day on the morning of the first presidential debate. After the first 2012 debate, Popovich gave his players DVD copies to watch. He did not subject them to the same exercise this year. Popovich found the first debate incredibly disheartening. Then he tried to watch the vice-presidential debate and couldn’t get through the whole thing.

“I worry that maybe I’m being a little too pessimistic, but I’m beginning to have a harder time believing that we are not Rome,” he said. “Rome didn’t fall in 20 days or 30 years. It took a couple hundred years. The question is: Are we in that process and we don’t even know it? I really am starting to think about that. It’s not just the two candidates. It’s the way the whole thing is being treated.”

The Spurs try to exchange ideas, especially about race, in more substantive ways. In last year’s training camp, they hosted John Carlos, the Olympian who raised his fist on the medal stand in 1968. During the season, they scored tickets to the Broadway show “Hamilton,” and they had a private screening of “Chi-Raq,” the film by Spike Lee, who answered questions from the players and then joined them for dinner.

This year, when they arrived at training camp, they received copies of the Ta-Nehisi Coates book “Between the World and Me” and previewed “The Birth of a Nation,” the new film about Nat Turner’s slave rebellion. The Spurs were so moved that they sat silent through the entire credits sequence, Popovich said. He expected they would talk about it on their own the next day.

“I think it’s important for their lives, for their kids, their wives, for our basketball team,” he said. “Everybody’s gotta get engaged with this elephant in the room that we all have to deal with, but nobody really wants to. People are, like, tired of it. Is it race again? Do we have to talk about it? Well, the reason we do is because it’s still the elephant in the room. Because it still has never been taken care of. Because it’s still there.”

What’s most remarkable isn’t that Popovich is one of the few people in sports to speak about such issues sensibly. It’s that, at this point, it was almost expected of him. People slap “Popovich for President” bumper stickers on their cars here because of his reputation for being utterly reasonable.

“If I just did basketball, I’d be bored to death,” said the coach with five titles spread over three decades. “How much satisfaction can you get out of doing jump shots and teaching someone to deny in the passing lanes? OK, that’s cool, that’s my job, that’s how I earn my living, and I have a good living and I enjoy it. But I’m not a lifer. It doesn’t define me. If I win a game, I’m fine. If I lose a game, it hurts, but I’m fine real quick. It’s not that important.”

His perspective has influenced the entire NBA. Popovich’s coaching tree casts a long shadow: More than one third of the league’s teams are now run by coaches or general managers who have spent time in San Antonio and understand the value of their organizational culture. The result is that the Spurs are the team that other teams want to be.

Meanwhile, conversations about politics and race in America are getting louder in the NBA. The sport’s biggest stars, many of whom are hugely influential black men, have become more socially conscious in recent years, and especially recent months. Their activism coincides with emphatic political statements from the league itself. The most significant one came this summer—not long after Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade opened the ESPYs with a profound message about violence in the U.S.—when the NBA moved the All-Star Game out of Charlotte in protest of a controversial North Carolina law.

But the NBA has been socially active in subtler ways under commissioner Adam Silver. Popovich happened to be in New York this summer on the weekend of the city’s gay-pride celebration. He didn’t know the NBA’s top executives would be attending, too, until he saw them in the parade.

“I’m sitting there, and all of a sudden, here comes this float, and I’m like: that’s Adam Silver!” he said. “I just thought that was the greatest thing ever.”

[SsKSpurs21]

Popovich says there

[LongLiveTheKing]

Will still get knocked out in the 1st or 2nd round.

[Spurs m8]

Will still get knocked out in the 1st or 2nd round.

Sorry, not all our heroes collude, some of us follow teams and have morals and ethics.

I also see you only jumped on Bron right after he won his first ring.

You arent even a basketball fan, you just like a man.

Cheers.